When we do not have competent, experienced, compassionate leaders in government, the American people suffer. That is the case with the novel coronavirus. President Trump and his Administration missed multiple opportunities to protect the American people from this deadly pathogen. Instead of recognizing the danger and confronting it head-on, President Trump lied to the American people about the disease’s severity, its transmissibility, and the threat it posed to lives and livelihoods.
Make no mistake: President Trump’s abject failure to respond forcefully and capably to the COVID-19 pandemic—his failure to lead—makes him responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
COVID-19 has laid bare deep fault lines in our economy, our society, and our health care system. Disparities in healthcare access, access to paid sick leave, in environmental quality, the employment market, and housing have contributed to disproportionate rates of infection and death among Black Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and certain Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
President Trump’s failure to pay attention to early intelligence reports about the pandemic wasted critical weeks in which we could have prepared for the outbreak. Once the pandemic began spreading in the United States, the President’s failure to lay out clear, consistent guidelines for cities, states, businesses, and school districts to control the spread of COVID-19 created widespread confusion and chaos. His reckless disregard for the advice of public health experts has made it harder for mayors and governors to protect the American people. Rather than surge the production of personal protective equipment and other critical supplies where they were needed most, the Administration held life-saving resources hostage for political obeisance. Instead of bringing Americans together, President Trump tried to divide us, using racist and xenophobic rhetoric that has contributed to an increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. During the pandemic, the Trump Administration is arguing in court to invalidate the Affordable Care Act and rip health coverage away from tens of millions of people.
President Trump and his Administration have also failed to drive an economic response that is commensurate with the scale of the challenge before us, preferring to act as though the recession caused by his incompetent mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic will correct itself. He has hung small businesses out to dry while cutting blank checks to the largest corporations; failed to enact adequate support for public school systems, colleges, universities, and state and local governments to maintain public services and jobs; endangered the health of essential workers by failing to enact workplace safety standards; and neglected to protect working families from economic ruin.
Democrats will save lives by using every available tool to beat back this pandemic, which continues to sicken and kill hundreds of Americans per day and lead a global effort to prevent, detect, and respond to future pandemic threats.
Democrats are appalled that President Trump failed to act on the advice of Congress to maintain a strong stockpile of critical medical supplies, including personal protective equipment, or adequately surge U.S. manufacturing of needed equipment through tools like the Defense Production Act. The resulting equipment shortages endangered millions of lives, including those of our brave frontline healthcare workers and other essential workers. Such shortages are unacceptable and must never happen again.
Democrats believe we must reverse decades of underinvestment in America’s public health infrastructure. We will substantially increase funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and for state and local public health departments, many of which suffered deep budget cuts during the Great Recession and are at risk of further cuts as a result of President Trump’s recession.
President Trump and his Administration have not only failed the American people, they have failed the world. In past public health crises, including the Ebola epidemic, disciplined American diplomacy shaped and led a common global response, rallied public and private resources, accelerated research into treatments and vaccines, and directed global emergency aid. In the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump not only failed to lead, he actively sabotaged global efforts to slow the pandemic. He refused to work with our partners to identify and coordinate the manufacture of potential vaccines; allegedly tried to poach exclusive rights to a vaccine candidate from our ally Germany; cut CDC and State Department programs for early identification of infectious pathogens; withdrew funding and support for the World Health Organization (WHO); and tried to distract from his dereliction of duty by drawing from the authoritarian playbook he so admires—using racist rhetoric to blame “outsiders” and stoke divisions at home.
From the outset, Donald Trump has bungled our response to the coronavirus, leaving America with the worst outbreak in the world with over 175,000 people dead, five million infected, and our economy reeling.
- New York Times, 8/6/20: "One country stands alone, as the only affluent nation to have suffered a severe, sustained outbreak for more than four months: the United States."
Instead of listening to warnings from Vice President Biden and public health experts, Trump praised the Chinese government's response and mindlessly parroted their propaganda — failing to prepare America to deal with the virus.
- Washington Post, 3/20/20: "Trump's insistence, on the contrary, seemed to rest in his relationship with China's President Xi Jinping, whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China, despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis."
- New York Times, 4/11/2020: "Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action."
- POLITICO, 4/15/20: "Trump, however, echoed many of those same assurances regarding China and its response to the virus throughout January and February, as the unique coronavirus began to infiltrate countries around the world. Just days before the U.S. recorded its first death from COVID-19, Trump touted China's government for its transparency and hard work to defeat the coronavirus that causes the illness."
As COVID-19 swept across our country, Trump bungled testing, leaving us with persistent shortages and delays even now. And, Trump inexcusably failed to get protective equipment to the heroes on the front lines of this fight, opting to side with corporate lobbyists instead of heeding Vice President Biden's call to fully invoke the Defense Production Act to mobilize our economy to fight the virus.
- New York Times, 3/28/20: "As the deadly virus spread from China with ferocity across the United States between late January and early March, large-scale testing of people who might have been infected did not happen — because of technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, business-as-usual bureaucracies and lack of leadership at multiple levels."
- New York Times, 7/6/20: "In recent weeks, as cases have surged in many states, the demand for testing has soared, surpassing capacity and creating a new testing crisis."
- Washington Post, 7/8/20: "Healthcare workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic are encountering shortages of masks, gowns, face shields, and gloves — a frustrating recurrence of a struggle that haunted the first months of the crisis."
- CNN, 7/14/20: "Trump administration's delayed use of 1950s law leads to critical supplies shortages"
As the crisis mounted, Trump's failure to effectively lead undercut our response to the pandemic at every turn and cost Americans their lives.
- POLITICO, 3/7/20: "For six weeks behind the scenes, and now increasingly in public, Trump has undermined his administration's own efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak — resisting attempts to plan for worst-case scenarios, overturning a public-health plan upon request from political allies and repeating only the warnings that he chose to hear.
- Washington Post, 4/4/20: "It may never be known how many thousands of deaths, or millions of infections, might have been prevented with a response that was more coherent, urgent, and effective. But even now, there are many indications that the administration's handling of the crisis had potentially devastating consequences."
- NBC News, 3/14/20: "An examination of how the Trump administration responded to the coronavirus outbreak that was first documented in December reveals a story of missed opportunities, mismanagement, and a president who resisted the advice of experts urging a more aggressive response."
Even after months of abject failure on COVID-19, Trump still refuses to take the threat seriously, repeatedly claiming that it will simply "disappear" even as he and his allies attack public health officials and undermine the basic measures we need to control the virus.
- POLITICO, 8/1/2020: "President Donald Trump publicly rebuked Dr. Anthony Fauci on Saturday, forcefully rejecting the nation's top infectious disease expert's testimony on why the U.S. has experienced a renewed surge in coronavirus cases."
